On Site Structural assessment of Churches in Stonework Damaged by the Earthquake

The northern part of Italy, around the area of Salò, at the Garda Lake, was hit by an earthquake on November 24 th 2004. The seismic event was not of particularly high intensity but involved a wide hilly area of the pre-Alps and many building requested repair and strengthening. The previous seismic event is dated around one hundred years before, in 1901. The magnitude of the earthquake was 5.2 of the Richter scale, enough to cause severe damage to public and private buildings. Many churches in the area, built from the XV and the XVIII century in stone masonry presented damage of different level, due mainly to the seismic event and to an intrinsic vulnerability connected with the construction technology, but also to the lack of maintenance and to non-compatible repair interventions carried out in the seventies.